Mother of rape suspect: "He's not a monster"

Robert Carl Yeager, 36, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Wednesday

Robert Carl Yeager is being held on $30,000 bail for burglary, trespass and criminal mischief. Also an additional $50,000 bail out of Adams County for escape. He has not been arraigned on the sexual assault charges yet. Submitted

After his arrest, Robert Carl Yeager wanted to be placed in the general population at York County Prison, despite a code among inmates of violence toward those accused of child molestation, said his mother.

"They had to force him to go into protective custody," Yeager's mother, Esther Myers, 53, said Tuesday. "He didn't want to, because he said he didn't do anything, he didn't have nothing to hide."

Myers acknowledged that her son "may be an idiot when he drinks, but to hurt a child? No ... He's not a monster," she said. "A lot of things are not adding up."

Yeager, 36, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Wednesday before District Judge Thomas Reilly in North Codorus Township. Yeager is represented by Assistant Public Defender James Rader.

Police charged Yeager last month in connection with abducting a sleeping 7-year-old girl on June 24 through a window at a Paradise Township trailer park, taking her to a nearby trailer and raping her.

From charging documents, it appears that the prosecution's case may center around DNA evidence. A state police lab reported to police that DNA from Yeager matched the DNA collected from the girl. The chances of it not being Yeager's are 1 in 10 quintillion or 1:10,000,000,000,000,000,000, documents state.

When confronted with this information on March 28, Yeager continued to deny raping the girl, documents state.

Myers is not denying the DNA is her son's — she said he had sex with a woman inside his trailer days before the alleged rape — but believes the DNA was planted inside the victim by someone else.

Advertisement

"He left a condom laying on the bed," Myers said.

It's Myers' theory that someone stole into the trailer, took the condom, and then placed her son's semen inside the victim, in an effort to conceal the real perpetrators.

"I believe somebody planted it," she said.

When asked about Myers' supposition, Kyle King, spokesman for the York County District Attorney's Office, said Tuesday, "We certainly won't be discussing it through the media, nor are we going to respond to absurd comments from a defendant's family member."

King added that the proper forum for the prosecution to present its case is Wednesday's preliminary hearing.

Myers also claims that her son was with her the majority of the day on June 23, driving around southwestern York County and northern Maryland.

Yeager eventually dropped her off at her New Oxford home, but in the early morning hours of June 24, "He talked to me until 4 o'clock in the morning," she said.

When asked about the possibility of her son committing the alleged acts after hanging up with her, she said, "He's afraid of the dark, he doesn't go outside alone; Robert has to have somebody take care of him."

Knowing how thin the walls of the trailers in the park are, Myers wondered how nothing was heard by either her family or Yeager's male roommate.

And finally, Myers maintains that her son saw the victim after the alleged crimes took place, and that the girl waved at him.

"The little girl seen Robert after this," at a motel where she had moved, Myers said. "Never once did she say, 'This is the guy the guy who did that to me,' never once."

ODESSA, Texas (AP) — A West Texas man has been charged with impersonating an officer by using sirens and flashing lights to skip to the head of the drive-thru line at a fast-food restaurant. Full Story

Sufjan Stevens, "Carrie & Lowell" (Asthmatic Kitty) Plucked strings and pulsing keyboards dominate the distinctive arrangements on Sufjan Stevens' latest album, and in the absence of a rhythm section, they serve to keep time. Full Story